


Be Glad That I Do Not Write You Love Songs

by bbcsherlockian



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: M/M, POV Sherlock Holmes, Unrequited Love, poor sherlock gets a bit confused
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-20
Updated: 2013-12-20
Packaged: 2018-01-05 07:53:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,110
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1091450
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bbcsherlockian/pseuds/bbcsherlockian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which John Watson is hopelessly in love with Sherlock Holmes and Sherlock Holmes is hopelessly in love with John Watson, but nobody has any guts whatsoever.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Be Glad That I Do Not Write You Love Songs

Don’t you see me? Sitting here silent in this chair that eclipses every harsh angle from you, holding my bow poised in mock contempt. Yes, you see me, but you don’t, not at all. There are so many words and syllables that I could express but I am choking my own throat in a bid to prevent them from being released. I could write every sentence of my sheer longing into reams and reams of sheet music that I could draw out so, so elegantly; you would understand then - my words easily voiced by this instrument - but you don’t know what my tongue is so valiantly keeping chained inside my ribcage because I don’t want you to know.

I want to see your entire gravitational resistance shift, your whole perspective on everything from the oldest rock formations to each particle of dust change and evolve at my hand. I want you to see me, truly, to feel the way that I can move your own private mountains for you in a bid to gain your affection. I could, so easily I could, but I don’t because I don’t want to. You have already pulled my every sinew, every cell apart and left myself to fix my body and organs back so messily that I am defective and you have changed me irrecoverably - I adore these scars. I do not have any desire to rip apart their delicate and raw edges again, this time for you to see the havoc of your handiwork. Remain oblivious because that is safe.

It’s so cold hearted, this irony. What - do you look at me engulfed by this chair and my faux air of arrogance and think that I am unaffected? That I am unlovable, unloving, distant, psychopathic, asexual, too lost inside my own head, dangerous, uncaring -- that I don’t care about you? I have seen the way you look at me, and I would be no detective if I couldn’t read through the shattered looks and wistful longing that you throw in my direction on a regular basis, but I am thankful that I can disguise my own glances of nauseating attraction so artfully. It is claustrophobic, restricted, being this irreversibly drawn to another human being and I loathe the taste of it on my tongue, the sensation of it crawling over my skin as if willing my limbs into action. Your gravitational pull is unavoidable and I might be getting dragged in - I am, I am - but I can hate and fight it with my every breath.

I am competent, independant, alone and unattached and _safe_ from these emotional ties that force people down and suffocate, suffocate, suffocate. You are slowly constricting yourself around my life and mine into yours but I can’t ever pull away. I should loathe you because you are supposed to be dull and ordinary and boring and so, so unremarkable that I should never have given you a second glance, but here I am, unable to drag my eyes away from yours.

I wonder if you too have words strangling your every movement and reflex of your throat, that you also have messily constructed sentences strewn together under your skin that are trapped under that hard shell of cells upon cells upon cells. I am thankful for this armour because if you allowed your words to escape, mine, I am sure, would be quick to follow and after that, my entire self would unravel and pool messily at your feet. My bow could sing for you, sing these enamoured thoughts right this second but instead I draw once, twice, harshly across the strings. Feel my contempt and be glad that I do not write you love songs. Be glad that I have learnt to school my facade so convincingly. But oh, how my fingers yearn to play you music.

I will place my fingertips over the print of your thumb on a cup that you have touched but I take care not to brush our fingers when you pass it to me. I write equations and case files and hypotheses, but I make sure to write my conclusions of you on the inside of my skull, scored into the bone where only I can read them. My head was once ordered and comprehensible but you have walked in and destroyed everything familiar: Papers and notes flutter endlessly into a pit that once held reason, on them scrawled essays miles long about the colour of your hair, the versatility of your smile. Clock faces have been broken and white, black, blood-red material ripped so that I am disorientated and lost in whirling tunnels of you. You encompass my every sense, my every thought, and I hate it.

My hand swipes painfully across the strings again and the piercing noise draws your attention - I’m thinking, yes, but of you you are oblivious - and I see a look of pained failed reciprocation dance in front of your eyes. How I ache to remove it, to ensure you that you are not alone in this -- I could. So, so easily I could, but I won’t. My throat is holding back streams of shouts that consist only of your name and they pound so thoroughly against every part of me, throbbing in tune with the increasing beat of my heart, that I am afraid this time I will not be strong enough to restrain them.

_turn around again just look at me look at me see what you feel reflected back in my eyes see that i want you and if you notice nothing ever again please just notice how much you are wanted how much you are loved by me look at me do not hear these tortured sounds but instead hear the music hidden within each agonising scratch i love you and i will continue to love you until i expire completely and rot into the earth and even then the dust that once bore my name will love you still stop walking away just_

_turn back and look at me_

_turn back and don’t let me hear your receding tread on carpet as you walk away from this_

_just look at me, please, and then you’ll know everything_

As the space between us gets larger and larger until it is infinite and I can no longer breathe, I close my eyes against the onslaught of pressure against my tongue and reiterate that love is a messy and dangerous emotion, blinding and constricting. I swallow and persuade myself to become - _unaffected, unlovable, unloving, distant, psychopathic, asexual, too lost inside my own head, dangerous, uncaring_ \- all that you perceive me to be.


End file.
